Cary man accused of having $65K in drugs gets 4 years in prison

A Cary man accused of possessing more than $65,000 worth of drugs in 2019 has pleaded guilty to possessing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder medication with the intent to deliver, court records show.

Sufiyan Alam, 38, must serve at least 50% of the four-year sentence and will receive credit for six days spent in custody following his June 2019 arrest, according to the sentencing order Judge Tiffany Davis signed on Tuesday.

In exchange for Alam’s guilty plea, prosecutors dismissed 14 other charges, including possessing with the intent to deliver 15 to 100 grams of MDMA, McHenry County court records show.

That charge is a Class X felony that carried a possible sentence of up to 30 years in prison. Instead, Alam pleaded guilty to a Class 2 felony, which carried a possible sentence of three to seven years in prison but also was probational.

Alam was arrested following a traffic stop near Route 14 and Cary-Algonquin Road, court records show. Deputies stopped him for failing to signal when required.

The McHenry County Sheriff’s Office had been surveilling Alam for nearly three hours that day, according to court records and testimony by Detective Nick Clesceri.

Before the stop, a a confidential informant told a McHenry County sheriff’s detective that Alam was going to deliver about 3 pounds of cannabis and two vaporizer cartridges in the Island Lake area, Clesceri testified during a hearing challenging the legality of the traffic stop, according to a court transcript.

The confidential informant told the detective Alam would drive to “his ‘stash’ house to pick up” the drugs, which would be in vacuum-sealed bags inside a black garbage bag, prosecutors said in a court filing.

During the surveillance, Alam was seen entering a home in the 1400 block of North Harrison Street, Algonquin, and leaving with a black garbage bag, prosecutors said.

During the traffic stop, a drug-detecting police dog indicated the presence of drugs and deputies subsequently found 1,816.8 grams of marijuana during a search of the vehicle, prosecutors said in court records.

A subsequent search of his home turned up additional drugs, the defense attorney said in the motion.

At the time of Alam’s arrest, he had 56.95 grams of MDMA, 2,992.5 grams of marijuana, two tabs of LSD, 0.51 grams of methamphetamine, seven 2-mg alprazolam pills, and four 20-mg pills containing amphetamine and dextroamphetamine, according to an affidavit a McHenry County Sheriff’s Office detective submitted with the criminal complaint.

The drugs had an estimated street value of $65,755, according to the affidavit.